Facebook Places: Buried Alive

When we read the headline “Foursquare wins major victory with death of Facebook Places,” we nearly fell out of our chairs. What did that mean for our clients’ Facebook Places pages we’d worked so hard to claim and merge? And all that duplicate deleting? What about the check-in deals our clients rely on to reward their fans, promote their products and increase foot traffic? Was Facebook trying to give us all myocardial infarctions?

But after taking our blood-pressure medication and reading various blog posts about the Places changes, we decided that headline was a bit…dramatic, as was our reaction to it.

The Facebook Places pages weren’t going anywhere, and neither were the Check-in deals that kept people coming through our clients’ doors. Facebook Places aren’t dead. They’re undead. We’d like to think they’re just going through a bit of an adjustment period. An identity crisis, if you will.

Instead of “checking in” to a place, Facebookers will be able to tag a location. From what we can tell, the “location” can be a city, neighborhood or a specific Places page (WHAT? I thought they died?!). What makes this feature better than the previous functionality of Places, is that people will be able to tag a future location or a past location, instead of just their current whereabouts. The location-tag isn’t limited to just Facebook statuses, either. People can add location tags to photos and albums as well.

Let’s say, for example, I wanted to write a Facebook update about how I plan on heading to Fuzzy’s Taco Shop during my lunch break to demolish a shredded pork Baja Taco or five. I could do so from this very computer I’m typing on now. Previously, people could only check-in from the mobile Facebook app on their smartphones.

So I get to Fuzzy’s and I want to see if there’s a check-in deal. That’s when I’d launch my Facebook app, click the “Check-in” button, and write a status update that says, “Tacos, get in my belly!” Then I’d click the locations icon, search for Fuzzy’s and choose it from the list of nearby options. The tag for Fuzzy’s Taco Shop would appear at the end of my status and would then flow into my newsfeed like any other status would. If there’s a check-in deal available at that location, it will appear below my post in my News Feed. See another example below:

In my hypothetical Fuzzy’s situation above, l’m going to assume my co-worker Jen decided to work through lunch. So I’d take a picture of my mouth-watering, guacamole-topped tacos, and upload it to Facebook with this status: “Hey Jen Winn Eaton, this is what you’re missing out on. Jealous?” and then I’d tag Fuzzy’s as the location.

So, with all the talk of the death and demise of Facebook Places, something must have bitten the dust, right? Right. RIP mobile-only Places Feature. RIP Places check-in stream. That’s right, we won’t be able to stalk our Facebook friends’ whereabouts from a dedicated places stream anymore. We’ll be forced to skim through our entire News Feed to find those gems of info like real, dedicated stalkers. Can we get a moment of silence?

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Now that we’ve properly mourned the dead, I have a few questions about the undead. The whole Places/Checkin/Tag/Location identity crisis leaves me wondering…

1. If there is a check-in deal that shows up in your News Feed under your status update, will your friends see the deal in their News Feeds as well? I’d like to think yes because that would encourage other people to check-in, but I haven’t found that information anywhere just yet.
2. If I tagged Fuzzy’s as the location in a photo, would that photo show up on Fuzzy’s Fan Page, being that it’s merged with the Places page?
3. If a Places page hasn’t yet been created for the venue you’d like to tag, will it say “Add a location”?
4. Will this change cause people to abandon Facebook Places altogether in favor Foursquare or Gowalla?
5. Is anyone else craving tacos now? Or is it just me?